D.Min. Program Offers Three New Cohorts!
Asbury Theological Seminary’s Doctor of Ministry Program announces three new cohorts beginning in the 2016-2017 academic year:
Preaching and Leading: Shaping Prophetic Communities, link to this: http://asburyseminary.edu/academics/degrees/doctor-of-ministry/cohorts/shaping-prophetic-communities/
Activating Missional Communities, link to this: http://asburyseminary.edu/academics/degrees/doctor-of-ministry/cohorts/activating-missional-communities/
Social Justice, Ethics, and the Church, link to this: http://asburyseminary.edu/academics/degrees/doctor-of-ministry/cohorts/social-justice-ethics-church/
The D.Min. Program is a leadership development and spiritual formation process designed to renew, retool and refuel your biblical, cultural and situational leadership vision and ethics.
“Asbury offers you an experience that challenges you academically, nourishes you spiritually and enhances you relationally with new, long-lasting friends in ministry,” Dr. Ellen Marmon, D.Min. Director, said. “The overall impact of classroom and contextual learning equips you to ‘lead a legacy.’”
Tailored for ministry leaders who demand excellence from themselves, the Asbury Doctor of Ministry experience builds a bridge from who you are now, to who you need to be as a faithful Christian leader in the 21st century.
Begin your journey at http://asburyseminary.edu/admissions/apply/ .
Explore our cohort options below.
Summer 2016 Cohorts
Preaching and Leading: Shaping Prophetic Communities
(Application deadline: January 2, 2016 for scholarship consideration)
The measure of a leader is not rank, title or fame, but the quality of community the leader has cultivated. For Christian ministry communities, such as congregations and ministry organizations, their leaders need growing expertise in the practices that shape communities to be vibrant in Christian witness and discipleship. This cohort invites career ministry leaders to deepen three primary skill sets: spiritual formation, biblical preaching, and missional leadership. In this conversation, participants will focus on deepening the spirituality of themselves and of those they serve, expanding their capacity as preachers, and sharpening their organizational intelligence to better mobilize their communities toward witness within and beyond the walls of the church.
Participants in this cohort will:
- Revisit ministry foundations in spiritual formation, preaching and leadership.
- Examine the intersection between the leader’s formation (internal) and the leader’s ministry expressions of leadership and preaching (external), especially the ways in which these inform the shaping of ministry communities.
- Receive practical faculty-mentor, peer and community feedback on preaching and leadership practices in ministry throughout the program.
- Produce both a Leadership Formation Portfolio and a Ministry Transformation Research Project.
Activating Missional Communities
(Application Deadline: February 15, 2016)
The missional church movement, through a renewed focus on the mission of God as revealed by Jesus and empowered by the Spirit, is challenging Christians to rethink concepts and practices related to mission, discipleship, spirituality, and leadership. A missional church fashions its practices on the belief that just as the Father has sent the Son and Spirit into the world to accomplish the purposes of the Father, so too has the church been sent into the world. Asbury’s Doctor of Ministry Program is partnering with Forge America to convene this cohort conversation. Participants will be introduced to the missional network paradigm of Forge’s pastors/theologians, authors/activists, and disciples/missionaries, all with the intent to help learners assess and apply the missional readiness.
Participants in this cohort will:
- Apply biblical, theological, and historical depth to discerning the operative paradigms influencing U.S. congregations at macro (institutional) and micro (local congregation) levels.
- Understand the paradigm shifts generated by the missional church movement and apply them to missional forms of church, discipleship, spirituality, and leadership.
- Evaluate and employ the distinct teachings of the Forge America Mission Training Network to discover new forms of missional-incarnational life and ministry, especially gaining insights into leadership that sustains missional communities and activates missional movements.
- Generate a working theory for their ministry intervention by establishing a biblical, theological, missiological, and theoretical warrant for research endeavors.
- Conduct on-the-ground, action-reflection learning in partial collaboration with the Forge Mission Training Network and members of the cohort.
January 2017
Social Justice, Ethics and the Church
(Application Deadline: July 15, 2016)
One critique of American Evangelicalism is that its theology fosters a fragmented spirituality, separating private/vertical faith from its social/horizontal implications. So when social issues, such as poverty, health care, corporate responsibility, crime, addiction, governmental policy, or race relations, rise in the headlines or the home front, the church’s response is often mixed or absent. Building upon Wesleyan practices of social transformation and renewal, this cohort conversation pursues practical questions about the church’s, the preacher’s and the lay community of believers’ calling in the face of a society’s hopes and challenges. This cohort makes public theology a matter of formation and mission.
Participants in this cohort will:
- Deepen their biblical and theological foundation for engagement in the work of social transformation–both as regards the identification of needed change and the spiritual and social resources for change.
- Build on their theological foundation with particular insights that can be framed as related to issues of public theological engagement.
- Select a particular topic/issue in public theology through which the four courses of the track will be processed, offering their case learning to peers.
- Demonstrate a grasp of the history of the topic and knowledge of the critical issues, terminology, and methodology utilized in forging the Ministry Transformation Project.